ASHM Report Back

Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.

Understanding our Evolving Epidemic

This morning I attended a series of presentations under the heading ‘Understanding our Evolving Epidemic’ and witnessed some of the most interesting sessions I’d seen so far, some even getting a bit heated!A few topics were about mathematical modelling and these poor statisticians are clearly used to having people leave their talks as they were very apologetic before presenting. What does it say about me that I really found them very interesting?! I’ll attempt to summarise the key messages below:

Mikaela Smit (Research Associate at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College, London) discussed how mathematical modelling can support the development of evidence based policy and guidelines in relation to HIV. One model they had developed to forecast non-communicable disease burden in HIV positive patients from the Netherlands concluded that in the future most medical issues would be cardiovascular, and that 40% of these patients would have issues with medications.

In another modelling study Katharina Kusejko (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) looked at HIV epidemiology in Switzerland and concluded that PrEP had a higher influence on HIV acquisition that condoms and ART; the modelling demonstrated that providing PrEP for 50% of MSM would prevent 250 new cases of HIV. There is currently no PrEP in Switzerland, so this study may assist the case for it.

One further modelling study was presented by a very lively David van de Nijver from the Netherlands on the Cost effectiveness of PrEP in Germany. In Germany a generic brand of PrEP has become available at the cost of €834/year compared to branded PrEP at €9512/year. His study showed that the cheaper brand could save 4 billion Euros and that Germany would break even after 10 years while most importantly averting 10,000 cases of HIV after 12 years. He insisted that Germany needs to invest now to get the savings and gain money for the future.

It seems sitting through modelling studies is worth it in the end as I learned a lot! Such powerful findings that can influence public health policy.